Register of Debates in Congress: Comprising the Leading Debates and Incidents of the Second Session of the Eighteenth Congress: [Dec. 6, 1824, to the First Session of the Twenty-fifth Congress, Oct. 16, 1837] Together with an Appendix, Containing the Most Important State Papers and Public Documents to which the Session Has Given Birth: to which are Added, the Laws Enacted During the Session, with a Copious Index to the Whole ..., Volume 8; Volume 53(Google eBook)

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Page 241 - If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation ; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any...

Page 241 - Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general...

Page 199 - Harmony, and a liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things ; diffusing and diversifying, by gentle means, the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing...

Page 66 - Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Page 241 - That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress.

Page 316 - Congress, for the encouragement and promotion of such manufactories as will tend to render the United States independent of other nations for essential, particularly for military supplies" (Journal of the House, I, 141-42).

Page 241 - A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the -others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them...

Page 170 - The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people: and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.